Rick Bayless

Recipes hold such delicious promise. Just follow along, the instructions whisper seductively, and you will wow your family and dazzle your friends. Or not. The cruel reality is — and we all encounter this — some recipes just don't deliver. How can you tell, preferably before you buy the ingredients, invite people over and start cooking, whether a recipe is "good" or "bad"? Here are 10 steps six cookbook pros say you should follow to get the most from a recipe. 1. Cook! The more you cook, the more you will learn and the easier it will be to spot a recipe that's "worthwhile or intriguing," says Dianne Jacob, an Oakland, Calif.-based...

For the first time in its 25-year history, the James Beard Awards, which concluded Monday night, were held not in New York City but in Chicago. And boy, did Chicago roll out the red carpet for the restaurant awards. (The journalism and book awards took...

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What's the best city in the world for great food? Saveur magazine's experts say pack your bags for Hong Kong while readers prefer to eat their way through Paris.
The Saveur Culinary Travel Awards 2014 announced last week point to the best cities, hotels,...

After spending an hour and half on my knees, sorting through stacks of cookbooks, looking for a recipe I knew must be somewhere, in some book--if I could only remember the name -- I was beside myself. I opened boxes. I tramped out to the garage to...

The James Beard Foundation has been intimately associated with New York City. After all, that was the city Beard himself called home, and in fact, it was the effort to save his old brownstone that led to the organization’s formation in 1986.
But next...

Am I the only person in the world who has felt a passionate rush from a perfect mouthful of food? I didn't think so. Because for me, and maybe you, the line between food and sex is blurred beyond recognition.
Let's start at the beginning — my...

The Fig & Olive restaurant chain drips with foodie cred.
The eateries, which started in Manhattan, feature fancy olive oils and celebrity sightings. An average diner's check easily breaches $50. The Mediterranean-inspired cuisine is the antithesis of...

I’ve made Rick Bayless’ recipe for "Shrimp in Simple Green Almond Sauce" from his "Mexico: One Plate at a Time" cookbook a couple of times, but this past weekend I found the perfect match when I opened a bottle of E. Guigal's Condrieu....

Bastille Day Brunch: In celebration of Bastille Day, the French independence holiday, Church & State Bistro is offering a La Jour de la Bastille brunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on July 14. The traditional French menu includes oysters, foie de...

Recently, I was invited to a friend’s house in Patzcuaro (Michoacan), Mexico, and we spent the week madly cooking. The market there was so fantastic -- fat yellow chickens, fresh chayote, baby jicama, a rainbow of fresh and dried chiles, heaps of...

This post has been corrected. See note below.
There's a good chance that the white tuna sashimi served up at your favorite Manhattan sushi joint isn't white tuna at all.
Instead, 94% of the fish labeled as white tuna in New York turned out to be...

Want to know what kind of fish is on your plate? So do Mario Batali, Rick Bayless, Thomas Keller and a who’s who list of major chefs who are taking a stand against seafood fraud.More than 500 restaurant owners, culinary industry leaders and chefs--...

With the economy still not entirely recovered, restaurants — and very good ones at that — are betting on happy hour deals to get customers in the door. I like to call it tapas hour, when you can get small bites and cocktails at attractive prices. It's a...

Long before Rick Bayless, the Too Hot Tamales and even Diana Kennedy, there was another teacher and cookbook writer who introduced authentic Mexican food to a wider American audience. Though she is all but unknown today, at the turn of the 20th century...

It was three days before Wilco was scheduled to leave Chicago to start its tour, and the band was running through songs on its newest album, "The Whole Love." Next up was "One Sunday Morning," a 12-minute cut that is at once the most...